This document discusses using technology like Google Image Search to help teach English literature, especially poetry. It provides an example of a poem that students struggled to understand references in due to cultural and historical differences. Looking up images of hawthorn flowers and the painting "Blue Pitcher with Flowers" allowed students to visualize the descriptions and better comprehend the poetic language. The document concludes that visual aids can enrich literary analysis by supporting students' understanding of figurative language and cultural references.

1. Teaching English Literature with
the Help of Technology
This is a part of series of small presentations on how
various forms of Information and Communication
Technology can be helpful to the teachers of English
Literature in effective teaching
Dilip Barad
M.K. Bhavnagar University
Bhavnagar – Gujarat – India
dilipbarad@gmail.com

2. Teaching Poetry with the help of
Google Image Search
• Teaching foreign literature poses several
problems:
– The cultural anonymity
– The Social code of conduct
– The Religious inconspicuousness
– The Mythical aloofness
– The difference in shared collective unconsciousness
– The Geographical remoteness
– The Historical distance

3. Say for example,
• This poem has some such lines which poses
some difficulties which even the use of
dictionary or command over English language
cannot suffice.
• This poem is taken from I.A. Richards’s
Practical Criticism (1929). Chapter 2:
Figurative Language.

4. • A study of Richards’s Practical Criticism, A Study
of Literary Judgmentreveals that Richards is a
staunch advocate of a close textual and verbal
study and analysis of a work of art.
• While studying the poem as per the approach
enunciated by New Critics – the verbal analysis of
the poem – our students faced some problems in
getting to the heart of the meaning of the words
in the poem

5. The Poem
Solemn and gray, the immense clouds of even
Pass on their towering unperturbed way
Through the vast whiteness of the rain-swept heaven
The moving pageants of the waning day;
Heavy with dreams, desires, prognostications,
Brooding with sullen and Titanic crests,
They surge, whose mantles’ wise imaginations
Trail where Earth’s mute and languorous body rests;
While below the Hawthorns smile like milk splashed down
From Noon’s blue pitcher over mead and hill;
The arrased distance is so dim with flowers
It seems itself some coloured cloud made still,
O how the clouds this dying daylight crown
With the tremendous triumph of tall towers!

6. While below the Hawthorns smile like milk splashed down
From Noon’s blue pitcher over mead and hill
• These two lines posed the most difficult
situation to the students to get to the core of
meaning.
• Hawthorn led to think of Nathaniel
Hawthorne – the person
• Milk splashed did not get attached to the
Hawthorn even after dictionary gave the
reference to ‘flower’.
• Noon led to believe that it is time of the day.

7. Solemn and gray, the immense clouds of even
Pass on their towering unperturbed way
Through the vast whiteness of the rain-swept heaven
The moving pageants of the waning day
• Visual memory: These images help students to
visualize these poetic lines

8. In fact, Hawthorn shrubs full of white flowers give the
impression of splashed milk over meadows and hill, when
seen from up above the sky, from cloud’s perspective.

9. Noon’s blue pitcher is reference to Susan Noon’s painting
• This was the most
difficult image to
connect in the poem.
• Thanks to Google
Image Search to give
this image.
• The fallen flowers out
side blue pitcher is
compared with the way
white flowers of
Hawthorn were visible
to the cloud – like
splashed milk over
mead and hill.

10. Conclusion
• I.A. Richards gave importance to metaphors and simile in
understanding figurative language of the poem.
• To get to the core meaning of emotive use of language or
to understand all four kinds of meaning (Sense, Feeling,
Tone,Intention), the reader should have powerful ‘visual
memory’.
• The socio-cultural-religious-geogrphical-historical-mythical
and separated collective unconscious of the Western
creative mind and the Indian (Asian) critical mind poses
threat to the meaning and misunderstanding of the said
poem, in particular and English (foreign) literature, in
general.
• The basic tools like Google Image Search engines can help
teachers and students to solve this problem and enrich
poetic experience – the aesthetic delight can be felt in real
sense when our visual memory is supported by real
images.

11. Reference
• Google, Image.
https://www.google.co.in/search?q=hawthorn+flower
• Noon, Sue. Blue Pitcher with Flowers.
Painting. http://fineartamerica.com/featured/blue-pitcher-with-flowers-sue-noon.html
• Richards, I. A. Practical Criticism: a Study of
Literary Judgment. Chapter 2. Figurative
Language. London: Kegan Paul, 1929.